by Julia Kelly
When she finally reached King’s Stables Road, she casually glanced to either side. There were plenty of people about, but each of them was preoccupied with their own thoughts. None would give more than a passing notice to a well-dressed widow walking to her carriage with drawn-back shoulders and a determined look in her eye. No one would comment when the driver hopped down and opened the door for her as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her to have a carriage at her disposal.
The moment she was inside the vehicle, however, she dropped the pretense. Pretending to be someone she was not had never sat well with her. It was why she’d made it clear to Alistair from the start that she’d never pretend to love him. It hadn’t been possible because of the man who now sat across from her, glaring at her hard.
Even through her annoyance at his high-handedness, her body longed for him. She was built for him and he for her, and that terrified her despite the treacherous little shudder that ran down her spine.
“This is not how we agreed to meet in the park,” she said.
Andrew grunted. “Today required a change of protocol.”
“You were the one who insisted on the rules,” she said peevishly.
A little tug of the corner of his mouth told her that he knew he was being unreasonable. So was she. She cupped his cheek with one of her hands and lifted her lips to his. He kissed her but only for a moment before pulling back and rapping a fist on the wall of the carriage.
“Drive,” he ordered.
The carriage lurched forward, and she fell back against Andrew’s chest as his arms came around her to steady her. All at once her breath left her in a rush, and she felt strangely light-headed. It wasn’t just lust that had melted her anger away and made her so willing to fall back into Andrew’s arms. It was the security of him. The protectiveness. The knowledge that he’d never let her down.
It was love.
Ever since he’d come to her asking about her brother’s debt, she’d tried to talk herself out of it, but there was no mistaking the swooping, rushing sensation of it. She knew she was a fool for falling back into the arms of the man she’d loved as a child. No. The man she’d always loved. Yet the more she contemplated it the more she realized her love for him had changed, twisting and bending as fate had tried to break them apart and they found each other once again. This passion that had sparked again between the two of them was as undeniable as the rising of the sun. It was inevitable that she would tumble back in love with Captain Andrew Colter.
Before him her needs had been simple: work, protect her shop, and keep Caleb from being kicked out onto the streets. That was as high as she’d dared let herself dream until Andrew had come crashing into her life again.
Until he’d changed everything.
She glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead at the wall of the jostling carriage. Something about him was off, distant even.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“It is nothing for you to be rude to me, Andrew. You walked by me as though I wasn’t there.”
His mouth twisted. “I apologize. It wasn’t my intention.”
“If you won’t do it again, you’re forgiven. Now tell me what’s the matter.”
He grunted. “A meeting went poorly.”
“A meeting?”
“With the man responsible for the prince’s safety during this trip,” he said.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“That he will not change the plans or cancel the prince’s ball because of a hunch.”
“But he has to.” It was imperative that the prince not attend that ball.
Andrew scrubbed a hand across his face and dropped it into his lap. “The man is an ass, but I don’t blame him. To cancel an event like that would mean having to explain why, not to mention how, a suspected assassin was given such a place of prominence on the very committee hosting the prince in the first place.”
“But that’s absurd,” she insisted, surging forward to take the seat next to Andrew again. “Surely the safety of the prince matters more than his reputation or pride.”
“What would you have me do, Lavinia? The man will not have his mind changed.”
“Let me speak to him about what I saw and heard. Maybe there’s something I can remember from Wark’s that will convince him.”
“No.” He bit the bitter word out. “You’ve done enough.”
“I can do more,” she insisted.
His jaw flexed as though he were wrestling with a decision, and then he shook his head once. “You’re off the operation. Effective immediately.”
“What? According to whom?”
“I’m your handler, and I say that you’re done. Gillie and I will continue from this point out,” he said.
Dread spread through her. He was shutting her out, turning his back on her as he’d done all those years ago on the streets of Eyemouth.
“Why?” she challenged.
“Gillie is a professional,” he ground out. “And I don’t think of her naked every second of every day.”
“I’ve managed to secure more information than both of you put together in these last few days,” she pushed. She could see his ire rising, but she refused to be cowed. She’d spent too much of her life being placated and petted, told to be a good girl and a pliant woman. She made the choices in her life now. She was a businesswoman holding all of the threads together. She was the one who had the last word, and he was trying to take that away from her.
“I know this will come as a shock to you, but I ran operations before this one. I know when an asset is no longer useful.” His voice was sardonic—cutting, even. He was trying to build barriers—the same ones she’d seen him construct when they were children. For years she’d clambered to climb to the top of the battlements with him. Now she was outside in the cold once again, pounding on the oak planks of the castle door with the ferocity of a woman who knew what it was like to be in that place of love and had been denied.
“Andrew, don’t do this. Not when I can help you.” Don’t push me out when I need you.
“You’re more distraction than help, and a dangerous distraction at that,” he gritted out. “This was a foolish idea from the beginning. All of it was.”
She crossed her arms against the glacial chill of his words. “What are you saying?”
He lifted those large blue eyes she’d loved to gaze into years ago, but there was none of the adoration she’d once seen in them. Instead they were the cold, calculating eyes of a jaded spy, wishing more than anything that this woman—this inconvenience in front of him—would slink away.
“The night of the Warks’ party was a mistake,” he said.
The words wounded her afresh, jabbing at the same thickly scarred part of her heart where his hatred had wounded her all those years ago.
“And what of last night?” she asked.
He dipped his head, and for a moment she thought he was going to cave, but when he looked up again his eyes were flint and steel.
“It was a weakness of character on my part to engage in any relationship with an asset during an operation,” he said.
“If that’s the only reason—”
“It’s not,” he said, clipping her protests efficiently before she could tangle him in them. “I don’t want you.”
“You’re lying,” she breathed, hardly believing it. “You cannot tell me that you don’t want me and expect me to believe it when your actions prove otherwise.”
He was warring with something, and she wanted desperately to grab him and pull him over to her side. The side where they could come together again, reconciled. The side where there was a future. The side where her heart didn’t wind up crushed on the carriage floor.
“I can’t keep you safe,” he said.
“I don’t need you to keep me safe, Andrew.”
“Yes, you do!” he roared. “And yet you refused to listen. Trust me when I say that you are not safe wit
h Wark and that there will be no question of you attending the ball with him so he can salivate after you.”
She jerked back. “That’s what this is really about.”
“What is?”
“You’re jealous.”
He huffed out a half laugh. “That’s absurd.”
“No, it’s not.” She was shouting now, her voice sharp over the rattle of the carriage wheels, but she didn’t care. “Every step of the way you’ve tried to block me. Why can’t you trust me to do this?”
It happened in an instant—a look of scorn that crossed his face before a cold, emotionless facade slid back into place—but still she caught it.
“Because you don’t trust me at all,” she said.
He just stared.
“Did you ever trust me? When you went off and sailed, did you ever believe that I would be there, waiting for you when you came home?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then why . . . ?” But she knew in her heart of hearts. The marriage. Seeing her next to her new husband. They would never move on from any of it because Andrew couldn’t. A deep, bone-aching sadness suffused her. Silly, silly woman to think that he would ever forgive her. She was a bit of fun, a way to let off some steam, a distraction. Only she’d wanted to be more.
“Stop the carriage, please, Andrew,” she said. She couldn’t be in here with him any longer. Not now that she finally understood.
“No.”
“Stop it now,” she said.
When he didn’t move, she raised her fist to rap on the ceiling, but his hand shot out to stop her. She inhaled sharply. Even in the depths of an argument, the pleasure of his touch still shocked her.
“Promise me that you won’t attend the ball with Wark,” he said.
She wrenched out of his grip. “Shouldn’t you know better than anyone that my promises don’t mean anything?”
If her words affected him, he didn’t show it. He was impenetrable, and she hated it.
“I’m trying to protect you, Lavinia. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“I never asked for your protection.”
This time it was Andrew who laughed. “You’ll have to reconcile yourself to it then, because you have it whether you want it or not. Just like you always have.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If you meant to protect me, you never would’ve signed on to that first ship.”
“I left home when I was hardly more than a child to work so that I could provide for you one day. Every single time I signed on to a ship was for you.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said. “You had your reasons—some of them were even good ones—but don’t pretend they were selfless.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what it was that motivated my own decisions?”
“You were trying to prove something to yourself and everyone else in the world. Something I still don’t think you’re satisfied with.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“That you can outrun the circumstances of your birth. You blame your father and mother for not being more. I never met your mother, but your father was a good man. He didn’t deserve that. Neither do you.”
A shadow passed over his face and she knew she’d gone too far, but that didn’t make any of what she’d said untrue. Andrew had loved his father, but it had been plain from the day he was old enough to understand class that he was ashamed of his father’s lowly status. She could remember him peering around the parish church while her father was preaching, taking in with keen eyes the wealthiest families in the town who sat in the first pews. He’d spin tales for her of the things they would do with their large house stuffed full of treasures from his travels. And she’d indulged him in all of this because somehow, even in the ignorance of youth, she’d realized that it mattered to him.
But now they were older. Their lives had changed so much, he’d come up in the world, and yet he was still trying to frame the world as hers and his. As though they were staring across two cliffs at each other, unable to breach the chasm between them.
“All I ever wanted to do was provide a life for you,” he said, his voice suddenly tired.
“I never asked that of you,” she said.
“But you would’ve. You would’ve wanted to know why you couldn’t have the dresses you wanted or the sweets you like or new slippers to go dancing at the town hall.”
Her anger broke like a dam breached. “Is that how little you think of me, that I would’ve let dresses and sweets govern my happiness?” She was shouting again, a lifetime of unspoken words and resentment coursing through her. “You’re all I ever wanted. I would’ve taken you however you would’ve come to me—rich or poor—but you never asked me what truly mattered to me.
“I didn’t need some heroic sailor who won bounties and made himself rich enough to build me a castle on a hill. I needed the man I loved to be there. I needed you to come home to every night, knowing that my husband was safe, but you died. You died, and I had to keep going in a world where the one thing I truly wanted was gone.”
“You married again. You built your life,” he said.
“And when you found out, you turned your back on me, never once asking what had happened. You didn’t think for a second that I had done anything but gone to Alistair of my own free will. It wasn’t enough that you broke my heart—you couldn’t even bring yourself to look at me. It took nothing for you to doubt me, and I’ve had to live with that for twelve years.”
Hot tears streaked down her reddened face. Her hands clutched at her chest, trying to hold in her heart that felt as though it were trying to burst out. “You aren’t protecting me. You’re pushing me away. Tell me that removing me from the operation is just because of Wark. Tell me honestly that you’re not terrified of what you feel for me, because we both know there’s still something here.”
He swallowed, and for a moment she thought he might break, but then he said, “This was a dalliance. Nothing more.”
“Don’t you dare cheapen what we have, Andrew. Don’t you dare.” It was as though he were determined to take her last ounce of hope and grind it into dust under his heel.
This time, when she balled up her fist to pound on the ceiling, he didn’t stop her. The carriage shuddered to a halt.
“I’ll see to it that Gillie pays you for your efforts,” he said. “Two thousand pounds, as agreed.”
So this was how it would end. With a cold transaction thrown in her face. She didn’t know why she’d thought it would be any different. He’d disappeared from her life once before and he was going to do it again.
The carriage door opened, sending sunlight spilling into the darkened space. Without another word, she took the driver’s hand and alighted to the street, two blocks from her shop.
She barely made it home before the tears began to fall anew.
Chapter Nineteen
ANDREW DIDN’T OFTEN long to drink to excess, but Christ did he want to drown himself in a bucket of gin now. Instead, he was standing in the middle of his office, tugging at the ends of his tailcoat, trying not to think about the mess that was the operation Home had forced him into.
The last few days had been their own special brand of hell, with the prince’s arrival. He and Gillie had done what they could to try to keep the prince safe, but with no access to the future monarch because that bastard Sir Reginald Palmer-Smythe refused to budge, it was mostly futile. At least they’d managed to make it through the first of the most high-profile royal appearances without an assassination attempt. After the parade, he and Gillie had come back to the shop, opened a bottle of whiskey, and toasted one another in weary silence.
At least the insanity of the last few days had kept Lavinia from his mind. A little. The memory of her crying in the carriage, all of her anger and frustration rushing out of her as she shouted at him, haunted him every time silence stretched around him. Each of the words she’d hurled at him was like a slap, and they stung all the more because they were true.
> Only Lavinia had the ability to cut through everything and force him to confront the ugliness within him.
She was right. He hadn’t needed to go off to sea. He could’ve stayed in Eyemouth and taken over the business as his father had hoped he would. But he’d gone off, filled with the cocky determination of a child who needed to prove himself and with no mind for the girl he left behind. He’d always assumed she’d be at home, waiting for him, loving and loyal as she’d always been. When he’d found that wasn’t the case, he’d blamed her for shattering the illusions that had kept him fighting, first for position and then for survival. In an instant, he’d become jealous. Twisted. Hateful. A version of himself he’d hardly recognized some days until one disturbing morning he realized that it had become normal. His default.
He’d had no right to blame her, he could see that now, yet it had taken him pushing her until she broke for him to understand that. And now . . . now his jealousy might have ruined any chance of holding on to her.
It’s better this way. Yet no matter how often he told himself that, it didn’t help close the yawning hole that had formed in his heart.
“Are you ready?” Gillie asked from the doorway where she stood, turning over an envelope in her hands.
He turned and spread his hands.
His liaison cocked her head to the side, giving him an assessing look. “You look tired,” she announced.
He shot her a glare. “I am tired. The last few days have been bloody awful.”
Gillie stepped into the room, and he could see that she was still wearing the vibrant lime-green-and-mustard windowpane check dress she’d had on earlier.
“You aren’t going to change?” he asked.
“I will. There’s just one last thing I need to do,” she said.
“What’s that?”
Gillie held the envelope up. Its flap was open, and he could see that it was stuffed full of banknotes. “I was able to secure the money you asked for.”
